The Weblog of Vijay Anand - from The Indian Startup Trenches

Comparing Accelerators in India – Side by Side – Part 1

Posted October 1st, 2012

As of Writing this Post, its October 1st. And for the past few weeks, there are tons of Accelerators coming up all over the place. While there are solid entrepreneurs setting up these facilities, there are also a whole lot of others who have never built a business in their life, but are converting excess office spaces into Co-Working and “Accelerator” spaces. I’m simply going to ignore the latter kind and think they don’t exist.

If I could count the number of times, folks have asked what and how to pick an accelerator, I think I would have made another million dollars right there. Truth is, between the variables that exist (and a major factor of influence being the key guy that you will work with), its still very hard to figure which accelerator will grant you the support that you require for your startup.

Here is a small effort, that was initially set for internal use, but am making it public, on the behest of friends like Mukund Mohan.

This is Part one of the series. There is a followup coming up that will help you relate to the service offered against the stage that you are in with your idea/startup.

1. As you can notice it mentions “Part 1″, implying that there are many ways to slice and dice this info, and there is more coming.

2. A few folks were asking for info such as the number of companies funded etc. Since not all accelerators kicked off at the sametime, that might not be a valid measure for comparison. If you notice, this slide was also the simplest and was aimed to be kept as a comparison of the offerings – as-advertised-by-accelerators (straight off the website). If it will make it easier to understand, consider this as the “Promise” slide.

3. Disclaimer: I am part of the team at The Startup Centre. I have, to be the best of my ability, kept this to be a fair comparison (and have made a few edits/changes based on feedback from folks from the other accelerators). Wouldnt even have made this public, except for the demand and request from the community to do so.